Shahzad Akbar, the director of the Foundation for Fundamental Rights, told Press TV on Saturday that only 170 of the people killed in the aerial attacks on the northwestern tribal belt of Pakistan have been identified as militants.
That means that “over 2,800 people were civilians, whose identities are not known, and they have just been killed on suspicion of being militants,” he added.
U.S. President Barack Obama publicly confirmed for the first time in late January that drone aircraft have struck targets inside Pakistan.
Obama said "a lot of these strikes have been in the FATA", the acronym for Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas.
Pakistan contends that the drone strikes are counterproductive.
“We are of the firm view that these are unlawful, counterproductive and hence unacceptable,” Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesman Abdul Basit said on January 31.
He added, “Our view has always been very clear and position principled.”
Sixty-four U.S. missile strikes were reported in Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal belt last year, down from 101 reported in 2010, according to AFP tallies.
On April 12, Pakistan's parliament unanimously approved new guidelines for ties with the United States. The guidelines demand an end to U.S. assassination drone strikes on Pakistani territory.
In 2008, the Pakistani parliament also passed a resolution demanding that the U.S. stop the drone strikes but the CIA continued to conduct the attacks in the country’s tribal belt.
The recommendations, which were drafted by the Parliamentary Committee on National Security (PCNS), also called for an unconditional apology for U.S.-led airstrikes in November that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers at two mountain posts near the Afghan border.
Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani told parliament that his government would implement the guidelines in “letter and spirit.”
“Our partnership cannot be at the cost of our sovereignty or territorial integrity. We want to proactively engage with our international partners. Our resolve to combat extremism and terrorism remains unshakeable,” he said.
The U.S. regularly uses unmanned aircraft for attacks on Pakistan's tribal regions, claiming the airstrikes target al-Qaeda and Taliban militants, but locals say civilians are the main victims of the assaults.
The aerial attacks were initiated by former U.S. President George W. Bush but have been escalated under President Barack Obama.
The U.S. resumed its drone operations in Pakistan in January 2012 after it halted the strikes in November 2011.
0 comments:
Post a Comment